2449 - Trump's Tariffs Tantrum & Musk On The Outs? w/ Ryan Grim

Summary

The Majority Report with Sam Seder: Episode 2449 Summary

Release Date: March 7, 2025
Guest: Ryan Grim, Co-founder and Reporter at Dropsite News, Co-host of Counterpoints

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1. Trump's Inconsistent Tariff Policies

The episode opens with Ryan Grim dissecting former President Donald Trump's erratic approach to tariffs. Grim highlights Trump's initial imposition of 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, only to reverse course multiple times within weeks. This inconsistency has left businesses in a state of uncertainty, making long-term planning virtually impossible.

Ryan Grim [27:23]: "I mean honestly, somebody out there is making a killing off of this, I think. And I have a feeling they're, they're, you know, the initials of their last name could be Trump in some fashion."

Grim discusses the potential motives behind these flip-flops, suggesting that it might be part of a larger scheme, possibly a pump and dump operation aimed at manipulating market perceptions and benefiting certain stakeholders.

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2. The Potential Pump and Dump Scheme

Grim delves deeper into the possibility that Trump's tariff maneuvers are part of a financial scam. By repeatedly adjusting tariff policies, Trump could be creating volatility that benefits insiders who anticipate and capitalize on these changes.

Ryan Grim [33:35]: "Someone going short on something and then just selling with every announcement, knowing that these announcements are going to keep coming."

This strategy not only destabilizes trade relationships but also undermines the credibility of Trump's economic policies, making it difficult for honest businesses to navigate the market.

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3. Elon Musk’s Role and Influence in the Administration

A significant portion of the discussion centers around Elon Musk's involvement in White House activities. Grim references recent reports suggesting that Musk has substantial influence over cabinet decisions, raising questions about the separation of corporate interests and governmental functions.

Ryan Grim [58:44]: "He basically tries to walk back, but can only do it halfway, it appears."

The conversation highlights a controversial cabinet meeting where Musk was present alongside key administration figures, leading to speculation about his real power within the government.

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4. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Its Implications

Grim and his co-hosts examine Trump's stance on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for immigrants, particularly focusing on the Ukrainian community in the U.S. Trump has hinted at revoking TPS for over 200,000 Ukrainians, a move that has significant humanitarian and political repercussions.

Ryan Grim [06:37]: "Like, I don't. You're using three letters. I don't know what they mean."

This lack of understanding, or apparent disregard, for TPS showcases the administration's chaotic approach to immigration policy, further complicating the lives of those already fleeing conflict zones.

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5. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): Criticisms and Misconceptions

The episode critiques remarks made by Marc Andreessen on Joe Rogan's podcast, where he inaccurately described the CFPB's role. Grim and his team clarify that the CFPB's regulations aim to prevent financial discrimination and protect consumers, countering Andreessen's claims of the bureau "terrorizing financial institutions."

Sam Cedar [44:08]: "A politically exposed person, you can just google this and find it out. That means if you are a mayor, a member of Congress... there's a higher level of scrutiny that a bank has to do..."

This segment emphasizes the importance of accurate information regarding financial regulations and debunks misleading narratives presented by certain commentators.

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6. State of the Union: Cabinet Dynamics and Musk's Involvement

During the State of the Union, tensions escalated as Musk and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy clashed over the handling of Air Traffic Controllers and other administrative issues. Reports indicate that Trump might be leveraging Musk's influence to enforce compliance among cabinet members.

Ryan Grim [60:58]: "He. He's like running it like a mafia don."

This internal conflict within the administration underscores the fragility of governance structures when influenced by powerful private individuals, raising concerns about accountability and transparency.

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7. Democratic Leadership and Strategy: Challenges and Polling

The discussion shifts to the Democratic Party's current struggles with leadership and strategic planning. Polls indicate a significant portion of Democratic voters believe the party lacks a coherent strategy to counteract Republican moves, particularly those spearheaded by Trump.

Ryan Grim [73:12]: "You have the Squad grew in 20, from 2018 to 2020, they grew 2022 grew again, but not quite as much because of 30 to $50 million spent knocking people like, even like Andy Levin out of office."

The conversation explores potential vulnerabilities within Democratic leadership, including figures like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, and the party's reliance on substantial fundraising to maintain political influence.

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8. Conclusion: The Future Political Landscape

As the episode wraps up, Grim and his co-hosts reflect on the complex interplay between Trump's policies, Musk's influence, and the Democratic Party's internal challenges. They emphasize the need for both parties to maintain strategic clarity and accountability to navigate the increasingly polarized political environment.

Emma Vigland [77:03]: "I think if Bernie Sanders were like 10 years younger, he could actually probably win the nomination this time around."

This closing remark underscores the generational shifts and strategic innovations required within Democratic ranks to regain momentum and effectively challenge the Republican agenda.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ryan Grim [27:23]: "I have a feeling they're, they're, you know, the initials of their last name could be Trump in some fashion."

• Ryan Grim [33:35]: "Someone going short on something and then just selling with every announcement, knowing that these announcements are going to keep coming."

• Sam Cedar [44:08]: "A politically exposed person... there's a higher level of scrutiny that a bank has to do."

• Ryan Grim [58:44]: "He basically tries to walk back, but can only do it halfway, it appears."

• Ryan Grim [73:12]: "You have the Squad grew in 20, from 2018 to 2020, they grew 2022 grew again, but not quite as much because of 30 to $50 million spent knocking people like, even like Andy Levin out of office."

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This episode of The Majority Report with Sam Seder offers a comprehensive analysis of the current political upheavals involving Trump's inconsistent tariff policies, Elon Musk's controversial role within the administration, and the Democratic Party's strategic challenges. Through incisive discussions and expert insights from Ryan Grim, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the forces shaping today's political landscape.

Transcript

[Sam Cedar]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar where every day's casual Friday.

[Ryan Grim]

That means Monday is casual. Monday, Tuesday casual Tuesday, Wednesday casual hump day, Thursday casual Thirs, that's what we call it. And Friday casual Shabbat.

[Sam Cedar]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Ryan Grim]

It is Friday, March 7, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Ryan Grim, co founder and reporter at Dropsite News, co host, counterpoints. Also on the program today, Trump flip flops on tariffs again and what increasingly looks like a rolling pump and dump scheme. Also on the program today, hot Republican on Republican action as Trump forced to pretend to put musk on a leash.

[Emma Vigland]

Ew.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes, gross go on a kink shape. Republicans finally admit government creates jobs by complaining of news stories about vets getting fired. Federal judge reverses the NLRB commissioner firing. And another federal judge in Rhode island blocks Trump's funding freeze as unconstitutional. Meanwhile, said funding freeze threatens food safety. This according to the fda. And as US Health organizations say, the freeze is hurting efforts to control Ebola in Uganda. Meanwhile, State Department bleeding its diplomatic corps now to close over a dozen consulates. Free speech. Republicans launch an AI program to catch foreign students whose social media seems sympathetic to Palestinians. Indian Independence. DoD efficiency alert. Untold man hours deployed to scrub images of non white guy military heroes. Speaking of efficiency, Elon Musk blows up another rocket at taxpayer expense. CDC tries to rehire 200 fired workers in a measles spreading oopsie Democratic establishment again angry at Democrats looking to protest Trump. And lastly, and this just breaking Homeland Security supposedly ending collective bargaining with 50,000 TSA workers. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen, it is casual Friday. Casual Friday. I forgot, I've honestly forgot what we called it.

[Sean Duffy]

The longest running thing we got.

[Ryan Grim]

I forgot what it, what we called it. I knew it was Friday. I just forgot what the nickname we had for it was. Yeah, it's, it's been, I've only been.

[Sean Duffy]

Doing it for about 30 years.

[Emma Vigland]

There's no more that's all right for knowledge anymore in our brains. I mean, I just think the information overload means some stuff has to go, right?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, I mean this is, I think probably over the next three or four years is what the show is going to consist of. Me just, you know, slowly degrading in my mental capacity. So people, that should be fun for folks.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean we've been Seeing it on the presidential level now, we'll have it for two consecutive terms and you can kind of.

[Ryan Grim]

Exactly.

[Emma Vigland]

Poetic.

[Ryan Grim]

I will carry the torch.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Speaking of watching, I mean, I don't know why I was so shocked by this. The Haitians who are living in Springfield, Ohio, are here on temporary protected status. We have talked about temporary protected status so many times on this program over the past, I don't know, 10 years, Haitians, we've had Afghanis, we've had, I mean, we've had people from all around the world here on temporary protected status because they cannot go back to their homes because maybe there's been a massive, you know, natural catastrophe or maybe there's tremendous political upheaval or whatnot. The temporary protected status program would be the easiest for the President to expand or contract at any given time. I think, of those programs, largely speaking. And it appears, despite the fact that he's already served one term, it's not like, I mean, let's be clear, Donald Trump was president already for four years. This is his second term. And he had time to bone up on stuff in those other four years. Like, looking back, like, you know, now that I think about it, I never knew about the whole elector thing or that it would be that undocumented or illegal immigrants couldn't vote. I didn't know about that. Why didn't anybody tell me when I was president? But now I've taken some time, I'm reading more and I'm getting, I'm boning up. Here he is in the White House. Was this yesterday?

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

We had one of his executive orders signing powwows.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

And, you know, he's getting such plaudits from the press for being open to the press and, you know, and, and we willing to ask, answer questions. And, and part of the reason why he's able to do it is that the press doesn't seem to have the capacity to make him answer any questions.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

Like they don't follow up on anything. And here is, here is Donald Trump being asked about whether he's considering revoking temporary protected status for Ukrainians who are in this country because Russia invaded their country and has been showering them with bombs for three years. TPS for the Ukrainians who live here.

[Donald Trump]

In the U.S. what about it?

[Ryan Grim]

Are you considering revoking the TPS status.

[Donald Trump]

For the more than 200,000 Ukrainians who live here in the US what are you saying?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, the Ukrainians that are here in.

[Donald Trump]

The US they're under a TPS on gps. I thought you said gps.

[Ryan Grim]

Gps, yeah. Pause it for a second. Let's. I mean, let's. Let's just, you know, contemplate this. What are you saying? In other words? Like, I don't. You're using three letters. I don't know what they mean. Oh, I thought you meant gps. Because of course, you. The. The. Are you considering revoking GPS for the Ukrainians in this country? There's not enough of a hint. There's not enough context like, we know we have. And he's been talking that he's going to boot out 240,000. I think it is Ukrainians here. He's been talking about kicking them out. And maybe he's thinking, like, oh, did we tag them with gps? Because he's so unfamiliar with the initials TPS that he actually thought it was gps. I mean, this guy has absolutely no idea. So it's Stephen Miller who's running it. Right.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean, obviously last week, or maybe it wasn't. It was two weeks ago when a reporter asked him, will you be discussing Aukus with the Prime Minister? And he didn't know what Aukus meant either. I mean, the guy, I don't think he's been doing anything in these past four years except becoming more unhinged and more conspiratorial and more disconnected from, like, even the practical elements of being president. He's just in Oann Ville or Newsmaxville.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, it really is. I mean, I think, like, you know, there's a couple of things that I think we need to really fully embrace as an understanding of just how stupid this guy is and how obviously so much of what is happening in his administration is happening at the behest of other people. And he is just so easily swayed because he is either incapacitated mentally or incapacitated mentally. Not by age. But go back a little bit. Play this. Because then, of course, like, he's lying about everything that follows from that. Good.

[Donald Trump]

On gps.

[Ryan Grim]

Gps. Temporary.

[Donald Trump]

Oh, I thought you said gps. Gps. Yeah, there were some news saying they were going to be revoked, considering that, well, we're not looking to hurt anybody. We're certainly not looking to hurt them. And I'm looking at that. And there were some people that think that's appropriate, and some people don't. And I'll be making a decision pretty soon.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Now, he's not been looking at it. What he just described is basically the dynamic you could describe for literally anything that exists in any sphere at any time. There are people for it and there are people against it, and I'm going to look at that. I mean, of course he's not looking at it. He has no idea what they're talking about.

[Emma Vigland]

No, he's got no idea. And Stephen Miller was on Fox News last night on Sean Hannity's program, just absolutely like dripping at the mouth talking about the deportation of pro Palestine demonstrators from this country as well. So, you know, we're seeing their authoritarianism kind of creep into all of these other elements. And like this is a far right foreign policy coming home to roost here. Whether it be the effects on the Ukrainian people who had to flee to this country because of Russia's invasion or domestic protests against our acts of aggression in the genocide in Gaza. That's what they're going to try to crack down on dissent. We saw it when Mike Johnson shut down Al Green when he was doing his active protest during the joint address. The cheers from the Republicans on that side of the aisle when they got security to escort him out. Like that's kind of the authoritarianism that, that drives this, this, this, the, this administration.

[Ryan Grim]

Yep. And I guess, you know, we'll talk to Ryan Grim about the flip flopping on the tariffs. I mean, it really is astonishing what's happening with this. And I, it is, of all the things that are going on, many are much worse for people. But this one is one of the most bizarre unless you start to just contemplate the idea that this is just some type of scam. But we'll talk to Ryan Grim about that. In the meantime, I'm not, I'm not trying to do a theme here about, about conservatives and their ethno nationalism or their lack of grasp on the, on facts and just basic things. And, but it just so happens about a month and a half ago, I guess it was, I did the Jubilee surrounded show, which is where I sit in the middle of the circle. And there are like 25 or 20, I can't remember how many it was conservatives, they were young people and there were a couple who I think like, you know, sort of knew what they were talking about to a certain extent. They, they live in an information bubble. And so there was actually one guy who I talked to afterwards and showed him some of the stuff that I think comes up in the show. It's about an hour and a half long. We recorded like three hours of it. I've seen the edit. It's, it's fine. I don't really remember what happened at the time, but this is a promo they have put out. It's not all as sort of. Well, I don't know how to describe what you're about to see. There were a couple of people, like I said, who didn't have basic sort of facts about things that made it hard to sort of debate or argue with them. And then there were some who were just set in a certain perspective, and I didn't feel like it was even worth arguing with them because, you know, what are you going to say to someone who says what the second person in this clip does? But this is premiering on Sunday, March 9th. So in two days, every private and.

[Sam Cedar]

Public sector gets tax cuts when you.

[Ryan Grim]

Hire a person of color. Government agencies don't pay taxes. Government agencies are funded by the government. That is not true.

[Sam Cedar]

That is not true.

[Emma Vigland]

Same with xenophobic national. Like, what's the problem with xenophobic nationalism? Don't you think that's better for Americans in general?

[Ryan Grim]

Nationalism is better.

[Emma Vigland]

We should have a coherent culture.

[Ryan Grim]

You and I have a fundamental disagreement. We will never see eye to eye on this. Hi, I'm Sam Cedar, host of the Majority Report. And today I am surrounded by 20 conservatives.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, my God. How did he deny that? How did he say that was untrue with such confidence when it's the most untrue thing I've ever heard in my life?

[Ryan Grim]

That's. That was the part that I found really disturbing. Like, you know, people make mistakes all the time.

[Emma Vigland]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

And, you know, we do this professionally and we make mistakes. And, you know, and the only reason why, like, I know this stuff is because I do it professionally. And we read in. But the level of assuredness that this guy had that the federal government, that federal agencies were getting tax breaks for hiring black people was astonishing.

[Emma Vigland]

Astonishing.

[Ryan Grim]

And, you know, you could see the look on my face, like, I didn't know how to, you know, I got like, is, are we gonna. Can we fix this and edit? Like, what? Like, I can't argue that they don't get tax cuts when they don't pay taxes. Like, but that was.

[Sean Duffy]

I love the girl who says, like, not just saying, like, we should be nationalistic, but saying xenophobically nationalistic.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. Like, I wondered, like, I wanted to go up to her after there was another guy. I wanted to go after her afterwards. Like, do you. You know what xenophobia means, right? No.

[Emma Vigland]

Or probably not.

[Ryan Grim]

And there was another guy who, I think as soon as he got to the table, like, a bunch of the other people in the circle, like, oh, no, because they thought that, like, he was coming in nodding as to what that woman had said. And I think he was going to go further. And they immediately voted him out and so he never made it to the Cat to the cut. But we'll talk more about it next week when we get the full thing.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, I'm so excited.

[Ryan Grim]

But you know, there were a couple people who had some decent arguments and you know, some people were, you know, wanted to change the topic to like God and stuff like that that I wasn't quite prepared for. I hadn't boned up on that. But we'll be out on Sunday in a moment. We're talking to Ryan Grim, co founder and reporter at Dropsite News, co host of Counterpoints. And I should say it'll be on Sunday on the Jubilee Channel. So I don't know. We'll put a link in the if we cut it up or put a link in the podcast in YouTube Description First, a couple of words from our sponsors Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable, Deleteme does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. Delete Me knows your privacy is worth protecting. Sign up and provide Delete Me with exactly what information you want deleted and their experts take it from there. Delete Me sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where they found it and what they removed. And understand Delete Me is not just a one time service. Delete Me is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet because they keep repopulating it as you go. And there's so many of these personal broker sites. I mean I think it's pretty obvious in the job that we do, pretty hyper vigilant about trying to keep that information as as off the Internet as possible. I've been using Delete Me for I don't know, eight years now. Maybe, maybe 10 actually. Geez, I think it was when we moved over 2013. Oh God, like 11 years I think it's been. And they just recently came on as a sponsor so I was happy to do it. I want to thank them for sponsoring today today's episode. It's super easy to find this information online folks, and it both protects you in situations like, you know, where I don't want people to know my my address or whatnot. But also it helps protect you from phishers phishing scams because they'll get some piece of information from a, from a data broker and they'll combine it with something that they buy in the dark web and then all of a sudden they have a complete package and they can really set you up. So take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan by texting majority to 64,000. The only way to get 20% off is to text the word majority to the number 64,000. That's majority to 64000 message and data rates may apply. Also sponsoring the program today, one of our longest time sponsors, one of my favorites because of their politics frankly and their product. But it was their politics that I was like especially drawn to. Sunsetlakesabad.com they have given tens of thousands of dollars to things like strike relief funds, refugee resettlement, Planned Parenthood give directly. They have provided mutual aid up in Vermont. They were not as an organization of course, but cheering on in some ways the protests against JD Vance. They support food pantries, I mean just a great company and a great product. And they're here to help you with something that is important to everybody and that is getting sleep. We all dread losing sleep. Daylight savings times is coming up. That means we lose an hour of sleep Sunday night. Is it Sunday night or Sunday morning? Saturday night, Sunday morning, whatever.

[Emma Vigland]

It is, whatever.

[Ryan Grim]

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[Sam Cedar]

Look out young people.

[Ryan Grim]

Now, I noticed I want to talk about a TikTok I watched of yours, I guess yesterday or today you're wearing the same outfit. Is this now like your uniform?

[Sam Cedar]

Different tie, different.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay. All right.

[Emma Vigland]

Do you, do you do jeans?

[Ryan Grim]

Are you a jeans guy with the wearing shorts underneath?

[Sam Cedar]

Today I, today I have jeans. So we did a Breaking points this morning from home. So I try to look nice for the Breaking points audience. And so I was already, already looking nice. I said, why not just share this with the Majority Report audience, too?

[Ryan Grim]

We can pretend you did it for us. We don't have to. Let's start. Look, let's start I want, because I know there's a big Maggie Haberman piece out and it sort of dovetails with what has happened with Elon Musk's control. Not control, not control of. Oh, wow, nice lighting of, of Doge, as it were. But let's talk about this tariff thing because this is, this is getting, I don't, I mean, bizarre on some level. Donald Trump passes a, essentially a change to NAFTA back in 2020 and called it the USMCA. And it was a trade deal with Mexico and Canada, who as far as I know, have been following that trade deal. I'm sure there's some disputes now and then they get resolved. But and so on. And then he comes into office and he's like, I don't like that trade deal that I signed. I'm gonna slap 25% tariffs on them. And then he says, I'm gonna wait. I'm actually gonna do it on Tuesday, but now I'm gonna wait for a month from Tuesday to do the tariffs. And then he goes up in front of his, you know, semi State of the Union at the beginning of the week, says the tariffs are happening today and Tuesday and the carmakers love it. On Wednesday, he gives a waiver to all the carmakers because apparently they loved it too much. And sometimes you don't want to get that close to something.

[Sam Cedar]

Too much winning, too much, too much winning.

[Ryan Grim]

And they got overwhelmed that they said, please, we love it so much, we don't want to be a part of it. And he said, okay. And then today he said, or yesterday he said, actually, we're going to wait another month. What, what is your most reasonable explanation of this?

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, I think all of the candidates have about equal weight at this point. Right. Because it's so hard to try to figure out any kind of straight line strategy. Have you read Yannis Varoufakis essay on Trump's tariff policy and his economic grand vision? You know, Giannis is an interesting guy. You know, left wing Greek, finance minister for the radical, when the radicals were in there for like six months. And kind of a man about YouTube.

[Ryan Grim]

We had him on, I think it was probably this time last year, I think, interesting guy.

[Sam Cedar]

And he attempts to take the dots that Trump has put out there and sketch out what an ideology might, what kind of ideology might fit into it and square it with things Trump has been saying throughout his entire life. You know, the exact same things he's been saying about China. Like if you go back to the 80s, he was saying about Japan, right. You know, they're going to eat our lunch, etc. But, but his love of tariffs has been, has been consistent. His, his deficit, fear mongering and stuff around the debt and the trade imbalances, like that's all been consistent. So Giannis's argument is he's trying to create turmoil around the world, which will lead to dollar appreciation, which will lead to basically more exports. The United States will be able to produce more exports by changing the balance of payments. He thinks that these other countries are getting a free ride.

[Ryan Grim]

Dollar depreciation.

[Sam Cedar]

Depreciation, Right. Dyslexic.

[Ryan Grim]

Right, right, right. I mean, so in other words, if the, if the dollar is worth less, it will increase our exports because the, basically the price of our goods will go down if you're in a, in a different country.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. And he thinks that being the world's reserve currency, this is Giannis's theory, is, is actually more of a burden than it is a benefit. And it's a burden because all of these central banks grab all of this American currency and they don't exchange it for their own currencies. And that artificially pushes the value of the dollar up, which then makes it harder for our manufacturing industry to sell to Europe, makes it cheaper for us to buy from them, which means, actually we're subsidizing their exporters. You know, we're. But, you know, we get cheap crap out of it. And he thinks that that has been a bad deal for the middle class like that. So that's the Yanis argument, that this is his analysis. If you flow from there, you would say, all right, well, he's creating all this chaos with Mexico and Canada to show Europe and Europe and China that he means business when he finally gets to it. But I would think that it would do the opposite. Like, that he looks like he's just. He's taking any power that his threats around tariffs had, like the power that he did have in January is kind of gone, because who's going to take seriously his tariff threats anymore? So I think that's where the Yanis kind of assessment.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, that's the thing is that doesn't.

[Sam Cedar]

Match up with what he's doing.

[Ryan Grim]

I've heard iterations of that, of that theory that Giannis presented and that, you know, I mean, it's a theory, but it doesn't feel like. But first off, like, why wouldn't you. And we should say that the tariffs on China, he put 10% to tariffs on in 2019. Those have remained on, and they actually ended up costing farmers in some respect because. And frankly, other products that. I can't remember what the designation is, but we have products that we actually have here sent to China to be processed and get back, come back in, and then it raises the price for essentially American producers, you know, in addition to the American consumers. So, like, nobody benefits. The American producers of these goods do not benefit from the foreign tariffs. But. But putting that aside, I don't understand a. The interim step of doing it with Mexico and China. I mean, excuse me, Mexico and Canada, who would be the last places you would want. Because of the. I think your cat is coming in. Okay, I thought that was.

[Sam Cedar]

No, that is a cat.

[Ryan Grim]

Boom. Mike. The monster.

[Sam Cedar]

Yes. The potato.

[Ryan Grim]

The. I don't understand why you would do this first with Canada and Mexico, because that's like literally shooting yourself in the foot because of how much this stuff crosses the border. You know, products that are made in America, they go to Canada and then they come back, and then they go back and then they come back because different parts of it are more suited to whatever their economy is. And then on top of which, I don't understand why you Keep turning these on and off because a. It makes it impossible for any business to plan anything. The only thing that it strikes me as is like, this is a pump.

[Emma Vigland]

And dump, like, like someone shorting the market. And this is someone going long on something.

[Ryan Grim]

Someone going short on something and then just selling with every announcement, knowing that these announcements are going to keep coming. Because outside of that, I can't. There's no other explanation for this.

[Sam Cedar]

At some point it's going to be hard to sell and buy on them because nobody's going to believe it. Nobody's going to believe it. So he's. Yeah, so he's going to have to figure out other. Other ways to like.

[Ryan Grim]

Do you think that's possible? I mean, because I. Look, we saw it with the crypto stuff that clearly is David Sachs just getting a payday. And you know, somebody apparently knew beforehand because somebody was leveraging like several hundred millions of dollars on margin in the crypto market at least. But it also just strikes me as like it's possible.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, but it can be both. I mean, I'm just trying to marry these two things with, with the Yanis Varoufakis theory about, you know, his feeling that being the world's reserve currency is her hurting us in negotiations. It can be. That could be the genesis of the idea. But his execution can be horrific because we know that he's an insane person who wants to go after our allies first because he thinks that's a show of strength probably to the rest of the world, but he doesn't have the discipline to follow through on it.

[Sam Cedar]

And he's very mad at Brics.

[Emma Vigland]

Mad at brics too. But that's where crypto can, can come in. Right. Because if we're talking about his. He's bought into this idea that, that, that the United States being the leader for, for the world's, you know, currency and the dollar determining value, if he feels that's an unfair deal, hey, we can get a crypto reserve and essentially. Right. Like weaken the dollar ourselves. This is what Malay did in Argentina, I guess, just without the fiat currency piece.

[Sam Cedar]

Could have something to do with it. I don't. Just my guess of reading him is that he doesn't take crypto seriously and it's just. But he's fine to just let his cronies just rip people off with it. It's like, you know, just go have, go have fun with it. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that he, I mean, he does.

[Emma Vigland]

Pump and dumps for himself. Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Tell Me how I can like make a, make a buck off of this.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

NFT. He does the NFTs. And yeah, he's, there's a scam. He's in on it.

[Ryan Grim]

The whole thing, honestly, feels like a less entertaining version or at least a lot of this stuff feels like a less entertaining version of the Sopranos. I mean it's just, he's just running it like a mafia don. And as long as we all have our own territory and as long as I get a taste, you guys go to town. If it doesn't cost me, it's a bust out. Honestly, it sort of feels like that. All right, let's, I guess, you know, we'll see what happens next with tariffs. I mean somebody out there has got to be seeing in some market. I don't know if it's like, you know, maybe oil or lumber or construction or you know, I'm not trading Canadian currency maybe.

[Sam Cedar]

I don't know.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean honestly, somebody out there is making a killing off of this, I think. And I have a feeling they're, they're, you know, the initials of their last name could be Trump in some fashion. So. But let's. Before we get to musk and this new story about, you know, from Maggie Haberman, so let's talk about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I want to play this clip from. And this is the first I heard of like them coming after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It was on the vox populi. No, Joe Rogan. Sorry. Where he invites all of his billionaire friends on to basically present conspiracy theories or just out and out lies or mechanisms in which to get popular support against things that end up protecting the populace essentially. Here's Marc Andreessen explaining to Joe Rogan a rapt Joe Rogan about debanking position.

[Marc Andreessen]

Of deciding who gets money. It's time to unleash economic growth.

[Ryan Grim]

Elon explained that there's more agencies than there have been years of the United states. Correct?

[Marc Andreessen]

Yeah. 450 federal agencies and two new ones a year.

[Ryan Grim]

This is not relevant. But Ryan, you've been working as a Washington bureau chief for years. Could you tell us the relevance of the traditionally, historically of the proportion of agencies to years that a government has existed? Because this is. What is that quotient called the.

[Sam Cedar]

And the Andreessen rule. Recent rule. Yeah.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean what's this just like topsy turvy bar trivia? There's also more members of Congress than the amount of years that the United States has been in existence. So check made.

[Sean Duffy]

AI can Give you?

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I mean, right. I mean it depends on what you consider to be. And you know, there's no accounting for size. Fish and Wildlife agency here, A small business. This like. Yeah. Just saying a big number like that is kind of absurd.

[Ryan Grim]

Exactly. If you put all those nickels together, it would reach to the moon.

[Marc Andreessen]

Federal agencies and two new ones a year. And then my favorite twist is we have this thing called independent federal agencies. So like for example, we have this thing called the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, cfpb which is the. It's sort of Elizabeth Warren's personal agency, Consumer financial. And it's an independent agency that just gets to run and do whatever it wants. Right. And if you read the Constitution, like there is no such thing as an independent agency. And yet there it is.

[Ryan Grim]

What does her agency do?

[Marc Andreessen]

Whatever she wants.

[Ryan Grim]

What does it do though?

[Marc Andreessen]

Basically terrorize financial institutions. Prevent new competition. New startups that want to compete with the big banks.

[Ryan Grim]

Really?

[Marc Andreessen]

Oh yeah, 100%.

[Ryan Grim]

How so?

[Marc Andreessen]

Just by terrorizing anybody who tries to do anything new in financial services.

[Ryan Grim]

Can you give me an example?

[Marc Andreessen]

You know, debanking.

[Sam Cedar]

This is where a lot of people.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, let's pause it.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's just highlight one hilarious absurdity there. His argument there is that Elizabeth Warren set up this agency to protect Wall street from competition against other banks. That those are words that just came out of his mouth to another, another human being who he expected to believe that is.

[Ryan Grim]

Do you think, I mean everything he's saying here is almost 180 degrees from the truth.

[Emma Vigland]

Yep.

[Ryan Grim]

Do you think he is consciously lying or do you think he's just this stupid? He just knows like it's against my interests. So I'm just gonna say stuff and I mean, because does he know that Joe Rogan's this stupid? Because if I'm Marc Andreessen and I'm on a of the biggest podcast in the country, I might be afraid to say something so untrue because if the person across from me goes like, hey, wait a second, Elizabeth Warren, she's built her whole career on things like antitrust and attacking banks. You're saying that she's actually protecting banks. And hey, wait a second, he's a senator, she doesn't run this agency. Wait a second. Like he doesn't seem to be afraid of this.

[Sam Cedar]

I think some of it is he thinks he can just get away with it. But I think some of it is he, I think he, he has personally been investigated by the CFPB and his, his friends have. And not just the cfpb. It's actually more the Federal Reserve and the sec. They have gone after different scam operations that he has put his money into. And I'm sure that that has been very difficult for him. And I'm sure he has been in calls with his lawyers who are describing to him what's being done. And he's absolutely enraged and feels deeply victimized by this and feels a genuine sense of injustice because these people surround themselves with sycophants who are constantly telling them that their great ideas about building an island in the middle of the Pacific are amazing. And you're such a genius. So to have some pencil pushing accountant like Rohit Chopra come in and send him a letter and say, by the way, all this stuff you're doing is illegal. Like, I'm sure there is a genuine visceral, visceral sense of injustice that then blinds him to the obvious reality that we can see. That's like, no, what you said just doesn't make any sense.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, it's like, it's like that, that noise that you get where you watch one of those movies where somebody is next to an explosion and you just hear that.

[Sam Cedar]

Yes.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, but can I just ask.

[Ryan Grim]

Nobody must correct him in his. Right, in his world, ever, ever.

[Emma Vigland]

So he's conflating here the rules that protect people from debanking with the. But I'm just asking Ryan, like that's, he's, he's conflating the rules that the CFPB had that protected people from getting debanked with the enforcement actions against him personally and conflating those two things.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay, yeah, let's continue on because that's where he's going to next.

[Emma Vigland]

Okay.

[Marc Andreessen]

Oh yeah, how so? Just by terrorizing anybody who tries to do anything new in financial services.

[Ryan Grim]

And can you give me an example?

[Marc Andreessen]

You know, debanking, this is where a lot of the debanking comes from, is these agencies. So debanking is when you're, you as either a person or your company are literally kicked out of the banking system.

[Ryan Grim]

Like they did to Kanye.

[Marc Andreessen]

Exactly like they did to Kanye. My partner, Ben's father has been debanked.

[Ryan Grim]

Really?

[Marc Andreessen]

We had an employee for what? For having the wrong politics. For saying unacceptable things under current banking regulations. Under. Okay, here's a great, here's a great thing. Under current banking regulations, after all the reforms of the last 20 years, there's now a category called a politically exposed person pep. And if you are a pep, you are required by financial regulators to kick them off, to kick them out of your bank.

[Ryan Grim]

You're not allowed to have your politically.

[Marc Andreessen]

On the left, that's fine because they're not politically exposed.

[Ryan Grim]

So no one on the left gets debanked.

[Marc Andreessen]

I have not heard of a single instance of anybody in the left getting debunked.

[Ryan Grim]

Can you tell me what the person that you know did what they said that got them debunked?

[Marc Andreessen]

Oh, well, I mean, David Horowitz is a right wing, you know, he's pro Trump. I mean he said all kinds of things.

[Ryan Grim]

You know, he's been very of the story.

[Sam Cedar]

So okay, let's do, let's do the PEP real quick for people who are curious about that. So a politically exposed person, you can just google this and find it out. That means if you are a mayor, a member of Congress, a banking regulator, like let's say you're Rohit Chopra for instance, cfpb and you are susceptible to bribery, like not susceptible, but like you're the kind of person that might be bribed, then there is a higher level of scrutiny that a bank has to do to make sure that these people aren't doing money laundering or like washing bribes through their, their bank accounts. That's what a pep is. It has zero to do with anybody's politics at all.

[Ryan Grim]

Like, is it called a political, what did he call it?

[Sam Cedar]

Politically exposed person? It's a, it's an actual.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay, so politically exposed in the sense that you could be like, I guess, subject to bribery or something like that and you have a vested stake in it. It makes you just more, I guess, vulnerable. You're a higher financial exploitation.

[Sam Cedar]

Same as if you live in Sinaloa and are conducting all of your transactions in crypto. As a bank you would, you have to have heightened scrutiny of that customer because we have know your customer laws. And that's, that's how that's where he gets caught. His companies like to work with those people. They create workarounds for those people. And they don't like that the CFPB or the SEC or the Fed are coming in and being like, so you're moving a couple million dollars of crypto from Mexico over to Lebanon and then into this New York account. Like, who is this? How dare you ask who this is? You know, these are freedom loving Mexicans or whatever they are. And then they'll shut their account down and they'll be like, I got debanked for saying something about Trump. But there is also, because they're also Trump supporters. So they're like, that's why it Was, it's like, no, no, you. That account got taken down because it was moving crypto for the cartels.

[Ryan Grim]

Now, there is such a thing as debanking, though, insofar as like you can lose your account if. Well, I mean, they're, you know, what's.

[Sam Cedar]

Happened like Laura Loomer has happened to her. Like the Canadian truckers. I don't know how good an example they are because they're in Canada. But like people, boys, I think, yeah, people. People have lost bank accounts because of their political activity. And the CFPB came in and said, you can't do that to Laura Loomer. Like, Laura Loomer has a right to uber eats and PayPal.

[Emma Vigland]

And it affects Venmo and PayPal too. Right. Like it affects other payments that are not even just your Chase or your bank of America or whatever. Right.

[Ryan Grim]

I just want to be clear here. You're saying that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau did the 180 degree opposite. They had a rule that you specifically cannot debank somebody because of political speech.

[Sam Cedar]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

You have this other regulators that are saying, we have politically exposed people so that we. Money laundering and, you know, treasury and whatnot. SEC probably looks into these things to make sure that you're not money laundering. Just like you can't take $10,000 out of your bank in cash and not have the bank automatically tell the government, like, you know, this is how. That's how Rush Limbaugh got caught with his oxy habit. But. So the CFPB had a rule that was exactly 180 degrees opposite of what Andreessen and Rogan were talking about and.

[Sam Cedar]

Took heat from the left because people on the left said to Rohit Chopra, why are you doing this? We should be able to debunk these white supremacists, proud boys or whatever. And Chopra said, no, that's not what the law is. The law is you can't discriminate for any political reason, even if these are odious political views. So he even took heat for doing the thing that the opposite of what they said he's doing.

[Ryan Grim]

So in fact, as of 48 hours ago, let's say that law was the law of the land, that you cannot debank somebody for politics. Well, thank goodness that that law is there so that Republicans do not feel like if they go on a white supremacy spree or something like that, they'll get conference.

[Sam Cedar]

You want?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, right.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, you can, you can swipe your card at the, at the Marriott for the kkk and you're going to be.

[Ryan Grim]

As long as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has that, that, that central regulation, as it were. Except yesterday. Tell us.

[Sam Cedar]

So yesterday the United States Senate goes to the floor with a, what's called a CRA, which does not require 60 votes because it's a quote, unquote, privileged resolution. Any, any rule that is implemented within the last year roughly of an administration is subject to being overturned by the next Congress. And the reason this came out in December of 2024 isn't because Chopra, like wait until after the election and did this thing that the right would like. He did this right away, but he got pushback from Wall Street. And so he's been fighting with Wall street for like four years and of course that long in the courts and going back and forth in the regulatory process. And so he finally gets it done. And it applies to any financial app that has more than 50 million transactions. So that's, that's how it ropes in. Venmo, PayPal, all of, all of these, all these other ones. And it would rope in Twitter if it does its, you know, what Elon Musk says it's going to do. It would rope in WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg's thing, you know, once WhatsApp starts allowing financial exchanges. And so they put a, a resolution on the floor to repeal this thing and every single Republican except for Josh Hawley voted to repeal it. So they got enough votes. Now it goes over to the House and we'll see. Because Laura Loomer is whipped up into a frenzy now because, you know, she, like she is. A lot of these right wing commentators will do whatever Trump says. That's, that's their ideology. They're pro tariffs on Tuesday and then they're against them if he lifts them.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Loomer not only is personally debanked, but she's also happy to go after Musk or Trump, even if we should also.

[Ryan Grim]

Say it's because she got jettisoned from Trump's orbit by Milo Yannianopoulos, who was.

[Emma Vigland]

I hid it and quit. It was. Do you want me to tell you why doesn't she call up Trump?

[Sam Cedar]

I don't, I don't know if she can get through Trump anymore.

[Ryan Grim]

I don't take calls from people with that kind of cosmetic surgery.

[Sam Cedar]

So there's been an effort to. Yeah. To sideline her. But anyway, so she still has influence on the right. And so there's, so now, now it goes over to the House and if she can find, and, and the aggressive debanking folks can find four or five Republicans, they can, they can stop this thing. Because the other thing that PayPal and the others don't like about that rule, it's two things. It's you can't debank, and if you're going to be one of these apps that does banking, you have to have a fraud dispute mechanism because there's so much fraud in these things. And they don't want that either.

[Ryan Grim]

Amazing. We don't want there to be a requirement that we have an apparatus to address the fact that people might have been defrauded via our app or because of our app. I mean, like, you know, nevermind, just like via. But maybe like somebody hijacked somebody's account or whatnot.

[Sam Cedar]

Think about customer support on Twitter right now. Like, for anybody, you know, who's like, gotten locked out of their account or like had some crypto scam like take their account over, it's like utterly impossible unless you, like, get somebody to go directly to Elon Musk to get it resolved. So imagine they're doing financial transactions, right? And you try to, like, appeal a charge that's on your. On your app. Like, forget it.

[Ryan Grim]

And we should also say, I think the existence of a regulation from a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on a app or an entity, you know, some type of banking thing, I would imagine, within the context of any type of legal cases, sets a precedent as to what that app constitutes. Right, because they want to pretend like, we're not a bank, we're not doing any banking, even though they're doing banking stuff. And if they're being regulated by an agency that regulates banks, it becomes a sort of like, de facto mechanism of defining them. So they don't even want the precedent that you're allowed to regulate these apps. And the longer time they have to develop without regulation, the harder it becomes to regulate them. Because they're like, yeah, exactly. And that is fascinating.

[Sam Cedar]

Zuckerberg went on Rogan too, and said, I have no idea why this agency would have any interest in us whatsoever. I interviewed Rohit Chopra and he was like, maybe Zuckerberg has forgotten, but they tried to launch a currency called Libra. There was that whole thing, like 2020. They launched a currency. It's like, what do you mean? You don't know why the CFPB or some other financial regulator might have an interest. And WhatsApp is actively talking about letting you move money between users.

[Ryan Grim]

Wait, Ryan, I cannot believe that you are even implying that there have been multiple billionaires going on to Joe Rogan to launder their essentially bucket list of deregulation that's going to allow them to make even more money at the expense of consumers and citizens.

[Sam Cedar]

I wish Rogan at some point would be like, all of these billionaires really hate the cfpb. Maybe I should look into it.

[Ryan Grim]

No, because they're, they're curiosity friends. They're his friends.

[Emma Vigland]

Their curiosity is all about like, you know, that's what he traffics in, in the UFO stuff or any, you know, the conspiracy theories that he engages in. They're all just very non threatening.

[Sam Cedar]

They were talking about yesterday, they were talking about how Frank Zappa is an in. Was an intel asset. Yeah, that's where that's. You lose me at that one.

[Emma Vigland]

But this is when you want, when you want to like kind of just keep people in a constant state of conspiracies, but conspiracies. And that doesn't actually threaten power in any way. I mean, that's what the Rogan podcast is at this point. It's a numbing kind of simulated attempt to look like you're challenging power. But like Zuckerberg came on and said almost identically what Mark Andreessen did. And then there was reporting that said that in November, you know, Andreessen is on Meta's board that the two of them met to discuss their new content moderation policies. And it seems abundantly clear, I think that they're both well aware that they're going on Rogan to launder their project and they have deep messaging coordination on this front.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, Abs. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's, and it's working a lot of decent. At least judging from the interaction of our audience over breaking points. He does seem to be losing people. Like it's get like your point is getting through to people that like that saw him as iconoclastic and like running up against, you know, the, the establishment now see him as, as doing the opposite.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, I mean, I think eventually this stuff catches up with you on some level, but hope springs eternal that it catches up even faster. Okay, speaking of catching up, last week in multiple court cases, Elon Musk. Well, let's go back three weeks. Who is in charge of Doge? The, the Trump spokeswoman, I can't remember her name at the podium. Yes, Says we know who's in charge of Doge, but we're not at liberty to tell you from this podium. We'll tell you in private. And then, you know, and everybody thinks it's Elon Musk because Elon Musk has been delivering a report to the President in front of all the Cabinet members at the Cabinet meeting about Doge. So, like, he just seems to be some random guy who picked up on the Doge newsletter and said, let me be the one to deliver all the info. It's on the Doge newsletter. So then they said it was a woman from, I can't remember, some lobbyist or executive. She was in charge of Doge. And when she was reached. Yeah, yeah, when she was reached on the phone in on vacation in Mexico, she's like, oh, I didn't realize this was public that she was in charge of Doge. I sounds sort of like she didn't know. I think she was like, on the set of the next White Lotus shooting or something like that. And so then during the State of the Union, and then there's court cases where judges are saying, hey, Elon Musk has not been confirmed by the Senate. He's not been vetted. He's not like a government employee. How can be in charge of Doge? And in the court cases, the government saying, oh, he's not in charge of Doge. He's just hanging around a lot. And then Trump on Tuesday night, during the almost State of the Union says Elon Musk is in charge of death regime and early to be brought up in court cases. And then, I mean, this is just insanity. He. He then says, this is yesterday. This is what he says. Number two, this one second. He basically tries to walk back, but can only do it halfway, it appears. Go ahead.

[Donald Trump]

I want the Cabinet members to keep good people. I don't want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut. I want the Cabinet members to keep the good people. And the people that aren't doing a good job, that are unreliable, don't show up to work, et cetera. Those people can be cut. So I had a meeting, and I said, I want the Cabinet members go first. Keep all the people you want, everybody that you need. And it would be better if they were there for two years instead of two weeks, because in two years, they'll know the people better. But I want them to do the best job they can. When we have good people, those. That's precious, that's very important, and we want them to keep the good people. And so we're going to be watching them, and Elon and the group are going to be watching them. And if they can cut, it's better. And if they don't cut, then Elon will do the cutting.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay, now it sounds again like Elon is in charge of Doge it also sounds like there's pushback. I mean, I have to say, I think the smartest thing I've ever heard Donald Trump say is probably better if you assess the quality of the work of these people over the course of two years as opposed to two weeks, because that's a hard time to sort of judge whether they're doing a good job. If you're just new on the job in the first place, you don't even know what they're doing. So, yeah, let's talk about like what the story that's just broke today by Maggie Haberman.

[Sam Cedar]

Yep. So on Wednesday night he called a cabinet meeting and kind of a rushed cabinet meeting and gets everybody plus Elon Musk into the, into the White House on Thursday. And John Swan and Haberman have details from this, the Cabinet meeting after the cameras and the photographers left.

[Ryan Grim]

And that's what Trump was just referring to essentially, I guess, where he told the people in the Cabinet cut but don't cut. And if you don't cut, then Elon and his group will cut. His group.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, yeah. And that certainly, that was the premise of the meeting. And Haberman and Swann can lay that out. The two, the two kind of big kind of nuggets that are in this piece, which is a fun read. Are Elon Musk going to war with Trent Duffy, the reality TV Sean Duffy.

[Emma Vigland]

Sorry, I mean, another douchey name that could have definitely been. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. There's many great Sean's and trends.

[Sam Cedar]

Yes. He who he was Congressman, now he's Transportation Secretary. And he also got into a Rubio with Duffy. He got into it over air traffic controllers. Duffy's like, I have multiple airline crashes.

[Emma Vigland]

Can I read this quote? Can I read this quote? Yeah. Just moments before the blow up with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Musk and the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration's equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fixes needed. Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, jumped in to support Musk. By the way, Lutnick has a bunch of investments in commercial space satellites that is very relevant here. Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Doge were trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said, I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers. Mr. Musk told Mr. Duffy that his assertion was a lie. Mr. Duffy insisted it was not. He had heard it from them directly. Mr. Musk asking who Was fired, said, give me their names, tell me their names, whatever. But they go on and on, essentially. But it's basically a pushback to, I.

[Sam Cedar]

Can'T give you a name because I stopped them from being fired.

[Emma Vigland]

Right, right, right. And so this was. But we also saw reporting that Musk was trying to put SpaceX people in place here. So he's being disingenuous, even in private, apparently, to Duffy.

[Sam Cedar]

And then he really ripped into Rubio because. And Rubio gave it to him back because Rubio was like, apparently, according to the article, pissed off about everybody at USAID getting fired. And, you know, there's an agency that's supposed to be under him, and he should have some. Have some direction over it. Musk told him, you're all you are is good on tv. Like, sounded like it got really personal. They said that Trump was just sitting back like this. Just watch. Watch them go at it for a long time. And then finally Trump comes.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm like, Lincoln, I like to have a cabinet of rivals.

[Sam Cedar]

And at the end, then Trump says, marco's doing a good job. He's on TV a lot. He's traveling a lot. He's. There's. He's got a. He's got a lot going on. You know, give, you know, cut him some. Some slack. And then Trump did tell the cabinet, which we'll see, I'm sure, in legal filings going forward, that firings are up to the captain, not up to. Not up to Elon. Who. Who's Elon, anyway, since he's not in charge of Doge.

[Ryan Grim]

But didn't he just say in that clip we just saw, but if you don't do it, then Leela Elon will come in and do it?

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, he's the backup that'll also be in the counter filing. Yeah. Is.

[Emma Vigland]

Did Trump just. Has he just lost his mind? Is that the explanation that we have here? I mean, we're trying to make sense of all this.

[Sam Cedar]

He also might just love the chaos and the attention and the drama. He's a drama queen. He always has been.

[Ryan Grim]

I just don't see why he would care. Like, I mean, I feel, it seems to me that his biggest loyalty, to the extent that he has any. There's anything curtailing him or anything that he's accountable to is just. He cannot afford to lose Elon Musk's sort of threat over the legislative branch to unleash unlimited money. That to me is. Seems to me to be the only thing that would ever incentivize or disincentivize Trump to do anything, because with that, he is unaccountable on every, in every possible way.

[Sam Cedar]

It's an unprecedented level of power to have over your own party, to have, to have a very credible threat of several million dollars getting dropped on you for any deviation.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, let me ask you about that budget resolution. That was now two weeks ago. But my sense was that nobody thought that that budget resolution would pass, that it was just going to be too difficult. And we saw the implication of Elon Musk's money right there, it seems to me.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, yeah, they. Trump made a couple calls and ended up with only Thomas Massie opposed to it. And he's, he's his own guy. Like, he's a separate. He's like a Ron Paul type. And, yeah, all the rest of them got in line. It was, people on the Hill were surprised. At one point, Mike Johnson even called off the boat and sent everybody home. Like, that's how dead in the water it was. But, yes, people are like, wait, do I really want to. Is he really going to spend $5 million on me and turn off my Twitter account?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. All right, let's. Lastly, let's talk about this. We don't have, we don't have too, too much time, but a week or two ago, we saw reports that Richie Torres was, I'm trying to remember what the words were. Resented and resented and objected to the implication that Democrats weren't doing anything. Hakeem Jeffries has been at a problem with the groups and happy that he's being protested from the extreme left and the extreme right.

[Emma Vigland]

The extreme left, like move on.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, exactly. And then, then we had the State of the Union. Al Green, among others, protested. Al Green was the most sort of vocal about it. He was protesting cuts to Medicaid. And apparently the Democrats establishment leadership is very mad about this. And this also comes on the heels, obviously, of the reporting about Chuck Schumer deciding we want Slotnik in there, who seem to feel that the best way to appeal to a national audience is to say that she's glad Reagan was president when she was 12 and not Donald Trump. She was 12, is my understanding. Yeah, I was older. I missed voting for Reagan in the second time by about three weeks. So I'm a little older than she is. And I can tell you that's a very savvy person to be excited that Ronald Reagan was president when she was 12. I mean, good for her. And so she must really have a sense of what people her age were excited about. But what is give me your sense of this because you and I were part of this in the back in the. In the aughts where we watched the Democratic Party completely be docile and sort of play possum, even though they weren't playing really just be possums for the Republicans. And it was in the wake of 9 11. There was like still like almost like the country was still in the state of shock in many respects. But how, like, how can they think this is a good idea? And they don't seem to have a plan.

[Sam Cedar]

No, their plan was laid out right by James Carville, that New York Times op ed where he said Democrats need to take a strategic retreat or whatever and just kind of step back and just let Republicans run the country and just. And just see what happens. I think that kind of advice is lapped up by Hakeem Jeffries, who doesn't really want to do anything. The party was so flat on its back in the time that you're talking about, if you remember that nobody governor of Vermont and Howard Dean was able to almost snatch the Democratic nomination because people just wanted somebody who would tell George Bush that he sucked.

[Ryan Grim]

Yep.

[Sam Cedar]

And he was willing to do it. And so like he very nearly pulled it off as a result of that. Didn't quite get there. Which is the history, you know, always the history of the Democratic Party. You know, they just managed to hold on to power within their own party and then lose it and then lose it to the other party. So yeah, we're right for a Howard Dean like figure who is not actually that radical.

[Ryan Grim]

Howard Dean's politics.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Were not particularly. I mean they were on the sort of conservative dam. He was against the war, but he was also sort of like pretty conservative on a lot of other things that didn't really play that much in that race. It was really his big innovation was that he was the first one to get small donors.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Right. He had that baseball bat and he would.

[Emma Vigland]

And the 50 state strategy too. Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Like that was how. That was how he ran for DNC chair after that. Kind of amazing that he doesn't get any credit, by the way, for being DNC chair. You know, basically the only time that Democrats won with the.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, six. Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Six and 08. Yeah.

[Emma Vigland]

Pretty good years for them.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So what do you think happens now? I mean, what is your sense? Are you hearing stuff? I mean the. It does not feel. We have a. Do we want to play this clip of swazi?

[Emma Vigland]

I didn't end up finding the. A good soundbite for that. But like, I listened to a little of Tom Suozzi's town hall yesterday, which he held. He was One of the 10 Democrats that voted to censure Al Green. And it was a variety of different callers who call, people who called into his town hall outraged over not pushing back against Trump enough and also specifically outraged of voting to censure Al Green. And he's going back and forth with them. And he's like, some of these people in this town hall aren't even my constituents or whatever, but they're feeling the heat. And like, this isn't something that we're imagining. Right. There was. There's been multiple polling, multiple instances of polling showing how Democratic voters and lean Democrats, it's a majority position that they don't think Democratic leadership is meeting this moment. And then there was a poll that came out from the liberal firm Blueprint. Politico put it out there. It showed that it's the plurality position that the Democratic Party has no strategy whatsoever for responding to Trump. Only 10% said the party had a solid technique for dealing with Trump. And this is coming from a liberal firm that is backed by Reid Hoffman.

[Sam Cedar]

I think if Bernie Sanders were like 10 years younger, he could actually probably win the nomination this time around. Yeah, because you'd have, you'd have enough partisan Democrats who are like, you know what, let's try this.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, we may be seeing nothing in New York.

[Emma Vigland]

Mom.

[Ryan Grim]

Donnie Mamdani is polling very well in New York. Andrew Cuomo's just jumped into the race. And Cuomo, you know, obviously has a lot of name recognition and a lot of sort of relationships and his father, et cetera, et cetera. So we'll see. But Hamdani is doing quite well in the polling. And I think it's a reflection of sort of Normie Democrats going, we need something. I mean, the amazing thing is that you've always, it seems to me quite obvious that a plan is better than no plan. Right. I don't remember who it was that said that, but a plan always beats no plan. Always, always. Because if you have a plan, even if it is a bad one, at one point, you can adjust. If you have no plan, you have no idea. You're always starting at zero. And I. Are you hearing anything in terms of, like, people are like, there is a broad based problem with the leadership either in the House or in the Senate. I mean, somebody told me the Talking Points Memo podcast, which is, you know, I think, like, about as sort of like solidly Normie Dem as you can get. They were talking about Chuck Schumer being in danger of being knocked off in 2028 when he runs again. And, I mean, from Talking Points Memo's podcast to God's ears. But what. Is there a sense that.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, yeah, I mean, there's also chatter. You would know this better, but there's chatter in Brooklyn that Hakeem Jeffries could actually be vulnerable this time, like, if. If they can find the right candidate because they've. They've wanted to challenge him, but he's got the machine locked down. He's. He's. He's. He's a good local politician, so he's got. Obviously has the money and the endorsement. So the left kind of never came for him in that district. Even though he, like, baits them, like, come on, bring it. What do you got?

[Ryan Grim]

It's a different. His district is an interesting district. It's almost the shape of, like, a fat boomerang. And it goes from, like, almost like, I think, to Brighton beach, almost all the way around the outer boroughs of Brooklyn and then back into places, like. I think it goes as far as Fort Greene. And so. And these are a lot. There's. There's gentrification that's happening there. There's, like, you know, if you get out towards Coney island, it's. It. There's a lot of, like, sort of Russian immigrants who are. Who are rather conservative in some respects. I mean, so it's a very mixed. And then in between, you have a lot of immigrant populations and Hasidic Jews, and it's a wide mix of voters, and it would be interesting to see if somebody could try and knock them off. I mean, you've got the Hasidic community that provides a very reliable voting block because they're fundamentalists. They're told what to do by their rabbi, and they go.

[Sam Cedar]

And that's tens of thousands of votes there. Yeah, right. It's like you're spotting. Yeah, he's. He's spotted several. Several tens of thousands of votes, which is. Which makes a challenge, like, insanely impossible, because you have to. You then have to beat him by, like, 20 or 30 points. But if those outer boroughs are frustrated enough by the direction of the Democratic Party, you could see a change election being at least. At least conceivably winnable. But, yes, there is. But you. But you can't beat somebody with nobody. And, you know, this is where the. The APAC and DMFI, you know, route of the left in. In 2022 and 24. In, in kind of killing in the crib, that that energy comes into effect because, you know, if, if, you know, the Squad grew in 20, from 2018 to 2020, they grew 2022 grew again, but not quite as much because of 30 to $50 million spent knocking people like, even like Andy Levin out of office. And then 2024, they, you know, they threw that $100 million in to kind of shrink it back down. And so it's. There's just less of a base on which to launch any kind of insurgency.

[Ryan Grim]

And we should say Hakeem Jeffries huge.

[Sam Cedar]

Helped organize that.

[Ryan Grim]

Huge funding from aipac.

[Emma Vigland]

And do you think, sorry, just to add to that, do you think that, that, that Hakeem Jeffries. This is a theory Matt kind of floated and I'm trying to build it out that there's a difference in between how Pelosi does politics, because she came in a pre Citizens United time and this is not to lionize her, but to say she's a bit more partisan and how Jefferies in that kind of era and that type of Democrat has come up in the last 15 years with unlimited money in politics and that's the only game they can play. Is that a something we could kind of.

[Sam Cedar]

That's, that's an interesting point. That's an interesting point because you could even take it further back to her, her upbringing in Baltimore under her machine politician dad, you know, who taught her that, you know, making sure that the trash is getting picked up and that, you know, people are getting the social services they need and like, and that you're giving like no show jobs to their, the, you know, the right people. And you know, she would go around with it as like a 12 year old with like index cards of like, who's on the machine's good list, who's on the machine's bad list and doling out favors, the good ones. And, and so you, in that sense, you really had to work, you know, block by block, which, which then she kind of brought more nationally. And yeah, if you're Hakeem Jeffries, you're trying to raise money by the hundreds of thousands. Yeah. And certainly you're more detached too.

[Emma Vigland]

Right, Right.

[Sam Cedar]

Like the machine politicians, they had their finger on the pulse, if nothing else.

[Ryan Grim]

Exactly.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, it'd be interesting.

[Sam Cedar]

They had their fingers around some necks too. Yeah.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, Ryan Grim, I guess we'll wait and see if there's any. If the stirrings. I mean, I think, you know, Chuck Schumer strikes me as somebody who's Very, very sensitive to the idea of being a primary, and rightly so. It's a much trickier thing on a Senate level from being, you know, if he starts to alienate Normie Dems, he really neutralizes the advantage he has from being from New York City. And things can happen upstate if you're not killing it in New York City. If you're Chuck Schumer as a, in a Democratic primary, sometimes it's, it's enough to make him worried. Like the Baileys are sitting there and they're going like, is everything okay? And we shall see. Ryan Grimm, always a pleasure.

[Sam Cedar]

Likewise.

[Emma Vigland]

Thanks, Ryan.

[Sam Cedar]

See you guys.

[Ryan Grim]

All right, folks, let's take a quick break, head into the fun half. Still have hour 10 of the fun half today. Just a reminder, it is your support that makes this show possible. You can become a [e-mail] when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, but you also get the fun half and you can IM us. And you know, you call into the program. Well, I mean, people call in when it's live anyways and you be a part of the program, give us your two cents, show us a thing or two, etc. Etc. Also, just coffee, co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off. Check out the AM quickie. Hard to keep up with all the news these days. AM Quickie helps you get about five minutes worth of an email blast three times a week. Great way to stay in the know, get a sense of what the, the broad outlines stories and it is, you know, from a majority report type of perspective. ESVN on hiatus. Matt left Reckoning.

[Sean Duffy]

Yeah, left reckoning. This weekend, patreon.com left reckoning our Sunday show going to be with Owen Higgins talking about his book Owned, where I don't know if he brought it up when he was on this program, but one of the things he said was David Sacks was the connecting tissue between Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk, which I thought was kind of interesting because Sachs used to follow me on Twitter before I said something nasty to one of his. Only followers can reply tweets before, but check that out. Patreon.com/Left Reckoning to hear that conversation.

[Ryan Grim]

Interesting. I did not, I did not know that. I mean, Sachs was like involved in like call in too right. That whole thing.

[Marc Andreessen]

Yep.

[Ryan Grim]

And I thought he was kind of.

[Sean Duffy]

He had his eye on the sort of independent media sphere.

[Ryan Grim]

I think like we almost got brought into that and I think My attitude probably towards stuff like that. Probably inhibited.

[Sean Duffy]

Think of all the opportunities we've blown by being a little bit nasty.

[Ryan Grim]

What do you get down? What do you get down?

[Emma Vigland]

I don't care.

[Ryan Grim]

Who cares?

[Emma Vigland]

Well maybe we'll do some more of that in the fun half.

[Ryan Grim]

Also. The bridges are exactly.

[Emma Vigland]

That's my favorite time of the day.

[Ryan Grim]

Goods night. August 9th. March 9th. That Jubilee will be out. We'll. We'll. We'll maybe cover a little bit on Monday. Quick break. Fun half. Three months from now. Six months from now. Nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. Now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out we're going to look back and go like wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. Emma. Welcome to the program. Matt. What is up? Everyone? No. Mickey.

[Sam Cedar]

You did it.

[Ryan Grim]

Fun hat.

[Emma Vigland]

Let's go. Brandon.

[Ryan Grim]

Let's go.

[Sam Cedar]

Brandon.

[Ryan Grim]

On Crap. Bradley. You want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

[Sam Cedar]

Fundamentally false.

[Emma Vigland]

No. I'm sorry. Women.

[Ryan Grim]

Stop talking for a second.

[Sam Cedar]

Let me finish. Where is this coming from?

[Ryan Grim]

From.

[Sam Cedar]

Dude.

[Ryan Grim]

But. Dude. You want to smoke this? 7A. Yes.

[Marc Andreessen]

Hi.

[Ryan Grim]

Me. This thing. Yes. Is this me?

[Sam Cedar]

Is it me?

[Ryan Grim]

It is you? Is this me?

[Sam Cedar]

Hello.

[Ryan Grim]

It's me. I think it is you. Who is you? Us. Out every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[Emma Vigland]

Sports.

[Ryan Grim]

We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to go Skyline. Who? Libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says of course.

[Emma Vigland]

Gobbledygook.

[Ryan Grim]

We nailed him.

[Emma Vigland]

So what's 79? 21 challenge.

[Ryan Grim]

Man. I'm positively quivering. I believe. 96. I want to say. 8572-1083-5501-1389 11. $3,400.

[Sean Duffy]

$1,900.

[Emma Vigland]

5. 4.

[Ryan Grim]

$3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game. Actually.

[Emma Vigland]

You're making me think less.

[Ryan Grim]

But let me say this. Call it satire. Sam goes satire on top of it all. My favorite part about you is just like every day. All day. Like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey buddy. We see. All right. Folks. Folks. Folks.

[Emma Vigland]

It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Sun's out. Guns out. I I I don't know.

[Emma Vigland]

But you should know, people just don't.

[Sean Duffy]

Like to entertain ideas anymore.

[Ryan Grim]

I have a question. Who cares?

[Sean Duffy]

Our chat is enabled, folks.

[Ryan Grim]

I love it.

[Emma Vigland]

I do love that.

[Ryan Grim]

Gotta jump.

[Sam Cedar]

Gotta be quick.

[Ryan Grim]

I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. 2:00, we're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

[Emma Vigland]

Outrageous.

[Ryan Grim]

Like, what is wrong with you? Love you.

[Sam Cedar]

Bye.

[Ryan Grim]

Love you. Bye.